Milwaukee Dinner Features Recipes Of Holocaust Survivors

A senior community near Milwaukee will serve a meal on Wednesday night of foods made from recipes discussed by prisoners at Nazi concentration camps.

The dinner is for some residents and other members of the Jewish Home and Care Center — Sarah Chudnow Community in Mequon.

Marketing director Marlene Heller said a few residents decided that they wanted the center to use recipes from “The Holocaust Survivor Cookbook.” Heller said that 2007 publication brought together dozens of recipes that camp prisoners would discuss to try to take their minds off where they were.

“They would say, ‘When I was a little girl, my mama would make this,’ or ‘We had these recipes during these times,’ and they would compare recipes and say, ‘Oh, you don’t make it this way, you make it this way,’” she said.

Heller said the menu will include kugel, brisket and chicken paprikash. She said the dinner will also include stories of the camp survivors who supplied the recipes. She said it will be part mourning, and part honoring and remembering the millions who died in the Holocaust.

The gathering is part of International Holocaust Remembrance Day.